A wide variety of electrical connectors are used for mounting on printed circuit boards to connect terminals on the connectors to circuit traces on the boards. One type of electrical connector, commonly called a header, includes an elongate, rectangular housing having side walls defining an upwardly opening cavity. Terminal pins are disposed in the cavity, with solder tails projecting through a bottom wall and through holes in the printed circuit board for soldering to circuit traces on the printed circuit board.
Often, connectors of the character described have a polarizing slot in a side wall of the housing to insure proper relative orientation of the terminal pins with contacts of a complementary mating connector. In other words, the terminal pins within the housing cavity are exposed through the polarizing slot in the housing side wall.
Such polarizing slots cause problems during soldering processes, particularly when the connector is located or mounted on the printed circuit board at a location near the edge of the board. During a wave soldering process the terminals within the housing cavity are susceptible to contact with the solder material which could enter through the polarizing slot.
Heretofore, the predominant solution to the aforesaid problem of contaminating the interior terminal pins with solder material has been to close the housing cavity with a cover which is removed after soldering, and to keep the polarizing slot closed with a continuation of the housing side wall which is scored along lines which define the polarizing slot. After soldering, a portion of the side wall is punched out, along the scoring lines, to leave the open polarizing slot for its intended purpose. However, such procedures not only require an additional assembly step during fabrication of the printed circuit board assembly, but removing of a portion of the side wall defining the polarizing slot, after soldering, creates forces which can damage the solder connections and/or damage portions of the connector housing or the terminals themselves.
This invention is directed to solving these problems by closing the polarizing slot, during the soldering process, by the same cover that closes the cavity of the connector housing.